Producer of religious programmes for BBC Scotland

Born: November 14, 1933

Died: March 20, 2018

REV Douglas Aitken, who has died aged 84, was the mainstay of BBC Scotland's radio religious broadcasting department for nearly 20 years. He was not only a distinguished producer, he was broadcaster too and as such brought a recognisable voice and a sure sense of what a faithful listenership wanted to hear.

He was appointed to be in charge of religious broadcasting on radio in Scotland in 1969 by the legendary Dr Ronald Falconer, then the religious broadcasting organiser with BBC Scotland. Ronnie Falconer told the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland that his religious broadcasting department was “the broadcasting arm of the Church”.

Dr Falconer chose Douglas Aitken over another applicant for the post who had much more experience in broadcasting precisely because they shared the same understanding of what was then regarded as religious broadcasting’s basic evangelical purpose. When the Church of Scotland’s virtual monopoly of posts in religious broadcasting was no longer sustainable, Douglas Aitken found the prevailing mood less comfortable, though he came round to the view that its audience had to be much wider than the churchgoing public and the interested elderly.

However Mr Aitken was always at his best producing live broadcasts of church-based worship. Congregations responded to his warm personality, and ministers were willing to follow his advice about how to relate what they wanted to say to an audience very different from the one they normally addressed on a Sunday.

This was partly because Mr Aitken was known as a professional broadcaster himself, whose style was most suited to the then regular late evening short acts of worship on radio. Network radio also appreciated his gifts which were recognised not only when he was appointed a senior producer but frequently called on to present programmes himself.

Douglas Aitken produced coverage of the Kirk’s General Assembly for over 20 years, nursing and encouraging its development from the straightforward reportage of extracts from speeches made in debates to a less deferential style of analysis and critical reporting. The leadership of the Kirk was less happy with the perceived loss of courtesy to what one former moderator famously insisted was “a court of the realm”, which he believed should have the right to dictate what should and should not be broadcast of its proceedings. However BBC management both encouraged and supported the change of emphasis.

It was both Douglas Aitken’s strength and weakness that, although a BBC executive, he remained an active churchman, a regular attender of and participant in his local presbytery of Dunfermline, of which he was moderator for a year.

Thus he was someone who was respected by the Kirk’s establishment as “one of us” but that almost inevitably meant he took time to accept what the then controller of BBC Scotland, Alasdair Hetherington, wanted on both radio and television. In recent years he compiled and presented coverage of the General Assembly on the Church of Scotland’s website.

Douglas Aitken was born in Wimbledon and educated first in London, and then, when his parents moved to Scotland at Glasgow Academy. His time studying first arts and then divinity at the University of Glasgow was interrupted by national service as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Royal Artillery. He was assistant at King’s Park Church in Glasgow and ordained there in October 1961.

While at university, he was chairman for a year of the annual meeting of the Scottish Christian Youth Assembly. Just over a year later the Kirk’s Overseas Council first appointed him to St Andrew’s Nairobi as minister of what was then the second charge and then in 1966 to the first charge. He did not avoid references to politics in his sermons in Nairobi, resulting in what he liked to describe as having to sleep “with a pistol under my pillow”. He resigned from the Overseas Council in 1969 when he joined BBC Scotland.

Douglas Aitken was warm, amusing and gregarious. He was elected to the town council in Dunfermline. He was a Liberal in politics and liberal theologically.

He is survived by his wife Fiona, whom he married in 1960, and his sons Ewen, like his father a minister and involved in local politics, Stewart and Ronald.

JOHNSTON MCKAY